Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Yesterday I received an email from a customer asking for the strange virus alert that appears on his screen everytime he vsits my site.
I explained him that is the anti-advertising feature of Norton Antivirus (against the Adsense cookies).
As my site is totally advertising supported, I think is dishonest browse the site while you block the adverts.
¿There's a way to catch users with these ad blockers? I'd like redirect them to a H1'ed page with only one paragraph: "This site is supported by advertising: be honest."
P.S. (I think there is some previous posts about this but I can't find them).
You do not get a "virus alert" with Norton Advert Blocking. It blocks the advert in the background without informing you.
Are you sure you (or your host) do not have a virus?
a) The customer asks me for the strange messages about "pagead2.googlesyndication.com".
b) I think Norton lets you decide the alert level (see everything, see almost everything, see most relevant and so on).
Do you think somebody who reads a "you have to turn on ads to read this site" notice will actuall turn on the ads, or just go away? And if they do turn on their ads and stay, do you actually believe they will click an ad?
As a side note, I would guess the majority don't realize they are even running it - ad blocking is turned on by default. They are not neccessarily out to "cheat" you.
When they enter your site, no program should be allowed to interfere with the site's appearance or function unless granted permission by the owner.
It's the same thing as a person going into a conference and ripping out all of the sponsor ad decorations around the room.
no program should be allowed to interfere with the site's appearance or function unless granted permission by the owner.
Should I ask permission of every publicly available website's owner to increase size of fonts on my screen because their choice was not right for the kind of resolution I run on my monitor?
RIAA with lots of money and lobby everywhere can't stop P2P filesharing, given that there is absolutely no chance you can force people on client side to view site in one single way you envisioned. It simple won't happen, so you might as well just adapt and find model that is acceptable not just to you but also to visitors of your site.
[webmasterworld.com...]
So, that analogy is not so much about TV and commercials. Should the shop keeper be allowed to tear out the table of contents (and advertisements) in all of the magazines he sells? To black out select articles in them?
Should the webmaster be able to design to industry standards, or should they have to worry about coding around NIS?
WBF
I got tired of deleting them every day and set it to 'immunize' my PC. Strangely Yahoo mail is the main culprit - also I notice it is not tied to any specific advert. I kept getting "Spybot has blocked 'DoubleClick" when a Virgin credit card advert popped on but other times it doesn't.
I also get Park Avenue and other tracking, prying little bugs trying to jump on my machine. Cookies I have no problem with though and wouldn;t have thought Norton would either?
Regarding blocking ads in the first place, I rarely travel the net without my Pop-up program set to "Kill" anything that, well, pops up.
I do see the point though, if ads are part of the site itself then you agree to those ads by using the site.
Take it to extremes and you'd kill all advertsing, therefore most of the better quality websites. Then, as everything 'free' vanishes and people actually have to pay just to view your site they'd probably cry.
Still, there are plenty of "Hi! This is my first website! This is my DOG, I call my DOG snowy, because he's black, he's a black DOG. Did you find my website by typing DOG? Snerty snert" sites they can go and play in.
Personally I'd like to deliver a graduated response, from "On a diet? You don't seem to be accepting cookies and cannot use some of the features of this site. Sorry about that" up to "So, you're blocking the adverts, you've blocked the cookies, you're in text only mode, you use a weird browser and a screwy screen resolution - please format your C drive and start again, you freak!"
But maybe that's just me?
Pibs
As it is clearly shown in [webmasterworld.com...] this type of system vandilizes your virtual property and disables what you intended to show in your own property.
When you turn off your TV or flip the channel, you are exactly leaving that property (channel) because if you were in the channel, you would have to see the advertisement.
If a random guy (norton) records your show, and sells it to you without the commercials... Guess what, that is illegal and so should be removing the ads from a website that is not theirs.
When you turn off your TV or flip the channel, you are exactly leaving that property (channel) because if you were in the channel, you would have to see the advertisement.
What if use annoying TV ads break to go get another beer, thus skipping ads and going back just in time to watch continuation of "property"? What if I use TIVO? Am I stealing?
I don't mind ads that make sense and don't jump into my face - like AdWords, however I reserve the right to do what I want on my computer - I will display stuff the way I see fit. You might not like it - and I would not if I was you, but in my view fighting with what consumers want strongly is a waste of time.
Just watch how successful Google's clean simple interface became despite or perhaps even because everyone else was using banners.
Guess what, that is illegal and so should be removing the ads from a website that is not theirs.
Skipping ads is not illegal and never will be - and even if new laws make it illgal then there is zero chance of this law being enforced as even more obvious forms of "illegal" things like file sharing can't be shutdown. There are more people who allegedly downloaded music from the Net than voted for current President of USA.
Norton does not run pop-ups to alert you that you have blocked ads.
I can set my Norton to alert me in a number of different ways, from pop ups to system tray flashes.
Any idea where I can get scripts to redirect users running NIS 2004 and similar software?You would think this would be the place but its still not available here. I am working on changing my adservers php files and filenames to exclude the url strings which cause an ad to be blocked [webmasterworld.com]. Of course next they will have updated their technology and I'll have to do it again.
And webmasters have every right to try to block them if they aren't viewing ads—if that's what the webmaster wants to do.
As someone else here already mentioned, ads are the reason why so much on the Internet is free. If this ad-blocking thing becomes more widespread, less things will be free. People cannot have it both ways.
I heard somewhere that big sites like Yahoo made a stink with (Norton? can't remember) when they had their security software set with ad blocking on as a default. And apparently (according to what I heard—don't know if it's true) Yahoo's and other "big name" sites got their voices heard and so at least for a while, ad-blocking was turned off by default.
If everyone starts blocking their ads, there will eventually be no more (free) Hotmail, no more (free) Yahoo, no more (free) IMDb.com, no more of a lot of these wonderful (and free) resources that we all take for granted. Blocking ads is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I am somewhat concerned about ad blocking, but I also realize that we "little guys" (at least we're little compared to Yahoo) are not the only ones who have a problem with it. Some pretty big fish are highly motivated to supress the ad-blocking trend. So, I'm not terribly worried about it. I believe that people want "free" more than they want "ad-free."
And if anyone feels that this is unreasonable—that they should have it all their way—no ads and all free—then they're living in a dream world. It ain't gonna happen. Not in the long run. No one has a right to expect that.
Google will lose millions of dollars.
They have a very loud voice and they also have all of us adsense publishers as support. If they make a move to stop ad blocking software they will not only have big bucks to throw around they have a army of people (us) who will sign any petition they put together.
When ad blocking software starts to really dip into Googles pocket I'm sure they will lead the charge to change things.
Hell they can buy Norton and just change the ad blocking code to suit their needs.
"Hey ..You there ..You can't see the ads which are here ( and which pay for this page to be here for you to read )..this is because you have Norton antivirus ..
It won't let you see the ads ..BUT IT WILL LET THROUGH lOADS OF VIRII AND TROJANS THAT IT CLAIMS TO STOP ....So You are missing my ads ..and maybe getting infected on all sorts of pages that you go to on other sites ...THIS IS LIKE WEARING DARK GLASSES BUT NO PANTS OR UNDERWEAR WHEN YOU WALK OUTSIDE ...Get yourself a REAL ANTIVIRUS not an EXCUSE FOR ONE .."
then give em a link to wherever you trust ..
Oh yeah and link em to firefox too ...
I'd buy that for a dollar...or two
Sticky me for the url since I can't post the url, can I?
Website viewers are not asking for or expecting ads to be shoved in front of them, either are we wishing for or expecting SPAM to fill our inbox. People have spam filters now, people will have ad blockers, deal with it.
ChrisKud5 wrote:Website viewers are not asking for or expecting ads to be shoved in front of them, either are we wishing for or expecting SPAM to fill our inbox. People have spam filters now, people will have ad blockers, deal with it.
Ads accompany something that someone has to go out of their way to visit or see. Nobody is forcing a person to visit a site. Granted, obnoxious ads like pop-ups annoy people, but non-obnoxious text ads (which Adsense certainly is) are certainly not that much of an assault on anyone's sensibilities. Unless the text ads are crashing the user's browser or somehow messing their computer up (an uncommon thing, I'd guess) there is no real pressing need to turn them off.
The ads are not clogging the user's inbox. The ads are not wasting or leeching anyone else's resources like SPAM does. The ads are just part of the package. If someone wants to see a free site, they have to tolerate the ads. If they don't want to tolerate the ads—if everyone decides that all their "free" content should be ad-free, they're living in a dream world. Nothing is free, really. Either it's going to be ad-funded or membership-funded or whatever.
Webmasters can't all afford to "donate" their resources and bandwidth for free. They are not in a charity business, wanting to give away everything to people with a sense of entitlement. And that's something I've been noticing—people have such an outrageous feeling of entitlement when it comes to the Internet. They think that if it's on the Internet, it should be free. But it is not, and it never will be.
If enough people insist on an ad-free surfing experience, they'll soon learn to regret it. Because they'll find that more webmasters will be blocking them, and we'll have far more pay-only sites. And guess who will be whining and complaining if this were to happen? Of course. The people who feel that everything on the Internet should be free. Easy for them to say—they don't have hosting bills to pay.
[edited by: yosemite at 7:48 pm (utc) on Aug. 28, 2004]
